464 Professor Renwick on 



computation, by which the vague year was reconciled to the 

 changes of the seasons ; this is evident, from a quotation from 

 Manet ho, taken by Marsham from Jamblicus, and from the 

 ancient chronicle, quoted by Syncellus, in both of which the 

 great period of 36,525 years, or twenty-five generations of the 

 Cynic Cycle, is referred to. If used at all, it must have been 

 employed as early as the commencement of this cycle, and of 

 its use the contemporary testimony of Manetho is conclusive 

 evidence. 



The Egyptians, I think it is evident, had made but little 

 progress in the astronomy of observation. The names and 

 places of separate stars, and of several groupes, were known 

 to them, and the year of 365 J days. Much further they do 

 not appear to have gone, as Ptolemy was compelled to have 

 recourse to Chaldean records for the facts on which his work 

 is founded. It appears, therefore, probable, that a cycle 

 which actually formed a basis for the computation of a greater 

 period, in which the year of Sirius, the vague year, and the 

 lunar motions, again returned to the same epoch, must have 

 been obtained by slow and long-continued experience, which 

 was, therefore, long prior to the date of the origin of the cycle 

 that terminated in A.D. 138. The happy superstition of the 

 priests, which led them to avoid restoring the vague year to 

 that of Sirius, as soon as the difference was detected, but 

 allowed their festivals to circulate through the different sea- 

 sons, enables us to proceed back to the first year of the 

 previous cycle, when the first day of the year again coincided 

 with the heliacal rising of that star. As the rising of Sirius 

 marked the beginning of the agricultural year, to which the 

 vague year was restored by a cycle, the first year of 365 days 

 counted in Egypt must have fallen on the first year of some 

 given Sothic period. It could not have fallen in 1322 B.C., 

 for it was, at that time, used as a mode of computation ; nor 

 could it have fallen earlier than 2782 B.C., because prior to 

 that period the cycle would not have been 1460 years. 



That the cycle ending A.D. 138 was the only one actually 

 used as a period in the formation of a calendar, we have 

 strong additional evidence in a passage of Clemens Alexan- 

 drinus. Speaking of the exodus of the Israelites, he places 



